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Sunday, October 26, 2014

The Paradox of Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech needs to be restricted to protect freedom of speech.

This apparent paradoxical statement is well-founded in philosophy, but
it is the cause of much confusion in online debates. Quite regularly,
any kind of moderation activity in comment sections or other
discussion spaces is likened to censorship, with the argument that the
basic human right of freedom of speech needs to be protected.

While it is possible to silence all dissent using moderation, most of
the time when freedom of speech is invoked, it is done in the
misguided assumption that ultimate freedom is the goal.

It can not be.

What is Freedom of Speech?

freedom of speech is the idea that the ability to freely
communicate your ideas to others is both beneficial and valuable to
society as a whole.

On the other hand, pretty much all laws and most of these treaties
also include provisions for the restriction of this (and other)
rights. The European Convention on Human Rights is rather explicit:

“The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and
responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions,
restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary
in a democratic society […].”

The notion here is that, while the free exchange of ideas is generally
beneficial to society and restricting this free exchange is bad,
unlimited use of this freedom can cause harm as well, so it needs
careful regulation.

Most of these laws and treaties are primarily concerned with limiting
the restriction of freedom of speech through governmental
intervention, but this freedom has a value in other contexts as well.

When online communities are created and grow, it is a good idea to
copy ideas from existing organizations. Freedom of speech as well as
the other human rights have a long history, so we do well in trying to
respect them in our online spaces, too. We have been rather good at
this. But at the same time, the long history also taught us that they
need to be restricted in some form or other, and we would do well in
learning that lesson, too. In particular related to freedom of
speech, we seem to have had trouble with that so far.

But if a right is inherently beneficial and valuable, isn’t it
consequently bad to restrict it in any way? This might intuitively
seem logical, but it does not hold up to closer scrutiny.

Paradox of Freedom

A freedom—any freedom—inherently includes its own undoing.

There is a common saying that your right to swing your arms ends just
where the other man’s nose begins, which explains rather visually how
the exercise of your own freedom can be used to limit another person’s
freedom. Hence, to protect the freedom of the other person, your
freedom needs to be restricted.

In philosophy, this is called the paradox of freedom. Karl Popper
describes the concept in his book The Open Society And Its Enemies I
(p. 226) as follows:

“The so-called paradox of freedom is the well-known idea that
freedom in the sense of absence of any restraining control must lead
to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave
the meek. This idea is, in a slightly different form, and with a
very different tendency, clearly expressed by Plato.”

As usual with paradoxes in philosophy, this one is primarily a paradox
in language. We’re talking about two different types of freedom,
namely the freedom of specific individuals as opposed to the freedom
of all individuals as a whole, that is, the freedom of society.

Ultimate freedom of a specific individual can require the loss of the
freedom of another individual. As soon as we put value into the
freedom of more than one individual, we get the problem of having to
balance the freedom of one with that of the other. This is a hard
problem, and the question of how much some freedoms can be restricted
to protect others’ is the main topic for supreme and constitutional
courts in various countries. There are, sadly, no simple answers.

While the paradox of freedom is most obvious for physical freedom and
assault, the same paradox is inherent in every freedom. Including the
freedom of speech. And while it is usually easily understood that
physical assault can restrict freedom of speech, it is an important
observation that exercising freedom of speech can be used to restrict
other freedoms, and even freedom of speech itself.

Restricting Speech

The most obvious way of using one’s freedom of speech to restrict
another’s is to not let someone get a word in at all. If you just keep
talking, the other person is left to either start a yelling match or
simply not speak. Their freedom of speech has been restricted.

As this is universally considered rude and not acceptable, some forms
have developed that use a similar pattern for similar goals. If you
get a large group of people with similar if not identical ideas, you
can have each and every one talk a bit, thus not appearing to be
occupying the whole discussion space, but still droning out opposing
points.

This is called dogpiling and the (usually) unintentional use of
which can be seen in many comment sections. As more and more comments
are added, any further constructive comment requires more work to read
through all the positions, thus increasing the barrier of entry for
most comments except the me too! type. This, too, is a restriction
of freedom of speech, as it limits the beneficial effects of the right
through exercising the right itself.

The same effect is utilized by derailing, where more or less
unrelated discussions are started that flood the discussion space,
thus increasing the effort needed to participate constructively.

As I mentioned, these things do not even necessarily happen willfully.
We accept some amount of this because we respect the participant’s
freedom of speech, but we would be doing well in being careful just
how much we allow, as this does, as noted, actively harm the idea
behind freedom of speech.

This assumption of civility and best intentions of others has been
used by those who willfully want to undermine the free exchange of
ideas, though.

The technique of a Gish Gallop refers to flooding the debate space
with badly-supported, minor and often reworded claims where opponents
would need much longer to refute each single minor claim, again
reducing the willingness to engage and driving others out of the
discussion.

In recent times, the focus on civil discourse has spawned another
technique, called Sea Lioning, in which a debate participant
assumes a false air of civility and keeps pestering others with
questions, often repeated, and often not reacting to or accepting
responses. Not only does this reduce the available discussion space
for constructive exchanges, it also quickly becomes a form of
harassment.

Harassment itself, even when done in the most civil tone, is probably
the starkest form of limiting other people’s freedom of speech. If you
have to be afraid that you stating your opinion will lead to you being
harassed, and be it by a horde of sea lions following you to your
bedroom for a “reasoned discussion”, you are much less likely to
express your opinion publicly.

This, much more so than any moderator action, is a danger to freedom
of speech.

Protecting Speech

These tactics and techniques are not new. They have been, in one form
or another, used in public debates and discussions for a long time. We
have already found a solution for these problems, too.

Whenever there is a public discussion, there has to be a person whose
job it is to make sure that no participant gets to utilize techniques
like I describe above to silence others, and that everyone with good
intentions can participate constructively.

This type of moderation is required to protect freedom of speech.

Online, this can have different implementations. As the topics of
discussion spaces differ, so does the idea of what does and does not
constitute derailing. For example, a discussion among physicists about
the Higgs Boson should be allowed to proceed without having to
accommodate beginner’s questions, even though beginner’s questions are
important and interesting—just not in this place.

The great thing about the internet, contrary to the physical world, is
that it is increasingly simple to create your own discussion space.
Websites and blogs are easy to set up, and social media makes it even
more simple. When your discussion attempt is not welcome in some place
because it would derail or otherwise limit the freedom of speech of
the participating people, it is trivial to start this discussion in
another.

Summary

I have not touched on all aspects of how freedom of speech can be
limited. Spreading lies, false statements, gas lighting, libel and
character assassination are more examples that might be worth
mentioning, but I wanted to focus on the general idea, not a detailed
list of examples.

Freedom of speech is a valuable and important good for a society, and
this also applies to communities online. On the other hand, like any
freedom, it is easy to lose. In attempts to protect freedom of speech
in our online communities, we all too often forget that unlimited
freedom necessarily contains its own undoing. Speech needs to be
restricted to some extent to allow for everyone to exercise this
basic freedom equally.

We’d all do well in remembering this the next time a moderator asks us
to drop a topic in a discussion. It is not as simple as yelling
censorship.